Trust Your Gut! Celebrity Apprentice episode 3

Soooooo sorry for being behind on this! In episode 3 of Celebrity Apprentice I am going to have to run down my notes a bit quickly. Here is what I was able to pick up from the show for all of you:

Sharon made a great comment and said to “Trust Your Gut”. I totally believe in this and live by these words myself and moving forward I think people should trust more of themselves when getting those little odd feelings.

Stay Focused and Organized! In these hard times you do not have the money to be wasting your time! Stay on task and if you find yourself on the stray find yourself an advisor or someone you can count on to keep you in check. I personally was able to find one of these people and he never tells me what to do but also reminds me that I need to make money and not waste my time on things that are not part of my main focus and goals.

Lead by example: Be the person you expect from your employees. Simply said!

If you are in a business that depends on presentations, rehearse! Spell Check! Have associates look it over. The more eyes before the “main event” the better. Remember that “first impressions” of your company will always remain just that.

Last but not least. CALL TO ACTION!!!! Duh people!! Tell your customers what you want from them. Be Very Clear, people will appreciate it.

Much Luv…

ChiTown // Jess

Celebrity Apprentice Episode 2 and You: Money Talks, Bullsh*t Walks…

Kodak was the company that the celebrities were representing this episode. If you are in a current position to rebrand your company this was your episode to watch.

So to sum up episode two for all of you as fellow entrepreneurs as well as business owners I came up with the following:

1. Be ORGANIZED!! Take the time to see what logistics you have running your company. Evaluate if you are running something that does not necessarily need to be run. For instance the men’s team did not use the large printers that Kodak provided at the site. Instead, they gave out a card to people who came into the store for the customer to go to the website to retrieve their photos with the men celebrities. This was a great strategy as not only did people get the experience in the store but now they also had a call to action to view their website. Not only that, but they did not keep loosing power like the girls did, which in the end says to me the men were saving money on their electric bill as well!

Do you have anything running that could be transferred to a more efficient process such as a website?

2. Delegate and Evaluate! Are your employees pulling their weight? Everyone needs tasks and you as the leader need to provide these tasks to make sure your employee’s are using their time wisely. Time that YOU are paying for. Take a moment to sit down and write down who does what. Then ask yourself if what they are doing is A. Their intended job and task and B. are they doing a GREAT job at it? If they are not, then they have to go. There are millions of people out there looking for jobs and if your people are not up to par, the reality is, that there is someone out there who will be able to fill their shoes. The time you spend to train this new employee might just be worth it, rather then the time your current employee is wasting not doing their job efficiently and wasting YOUR money!

3. Does your business have a WOW factor? I know we all don’t have a celebrity to champion our brand so you just have to get creative. Think out of the box; see what you can come up with. Run your list by some people and do the one that they all think is the craziest and is most cost efficient for you to be comfortable with.

4. Hire a secret shopper! These people will provide to you priceless information as to how your staff is doing and working with the customers when you are not around. This will also help you with step two with figuring out who is dead weight in your company.

5. Show your wears! Make sure your products are properly on display at all times. You also need to make sure your staff is fully trained on your products and they are able to answer any questions a customer might have about those products.

So to sum it all up, Organize, Delegate, Evaluate, WOW them, Brand correctly and SELL, SELL, SELL.

If you learned something else from the episode please chime in….

// ChiTown Jess

Are you an Entrepreneur? I am...

My name is Jessica Loren Popov and these are my confessions to you as an Entrepreneur.

I would like to start off by saying thank you to anyone who takes the time to read my blog. By no means am I an expert or for that matter a writer; I will only offer my simple advice and knowledge as a young Entrepreneur here in Chicago. To be honest I have always thought of myself as a ChiPreneur, which I derived from Chicago and Entrepreneur. ChiTown has been a nickname for this great city for as long as most of my family members and I can remember. “”Chi-Town” or “Chitown” Pronunciation of this nickname can vary (from chai-town to shy-town). I would also like to add that spelling and grammar have never been my strengths, so I apologize and feel free to correct me.

A little bit more about myself, first off, I am a growing web enthusiast. I was born in Chicago and as a small child lived in the Elmwood Park area. My family moved on to Florida for a stint and then moved back to the suburban area of Chicagoland. I have always had a passion for the city. I have had many a sales job in the past always toping and exceeding my sales goals. I have worked with large companies such as The Career Education Corporation, Nextel Communication and Cortiva Institute. However, I pride myself with some of my more successful ventures as a child being when I was a only 7 years old selling hot dog at my neighborhoods annual garage sale as well as lemonade stands. Needless to say, my quest for success has grown since my childhood. I use my day-to-day life as a sponge for new ideas in the business of web creation. I am an avid reader of industry related articles, books and magazines such as Entrepreneur Magazine, being one of my favorites.

I am educated from Indiana University Bloomington as well Loyola University Chicago with studies in Advertising and Public Relations. However, as most entrepreneurs I have yet to finish but I do plan to do so in the future. I thrive on new ideas and the ability to make them a reality. I am a superior networker and I’m guaranteed to know exactly what you do and how we can connect or connect with someone you know within the first meeting.

The reason for this blog is to offer a viewpoint to others of being a young entrepreneur here in Chicago and hopefully to offer advice and well as gain some from other ChiPreneurs. Younger or older we can all learn from one another, The young have a viewpoint of the new wave of the social marketing media avenues and well the more experienced, have just that, EXPERIENCE!

I would like to start off the new year of reminding all fellow entrepreneurs of their strengths. Times may be tough right now but we can all get through it. Especially with the help of each other, which I hope, this blog will achieve.

Please remember that an entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. Yes, that right as entrepreneurs we take risks, which don’t always turn out the best but we always survive and pull through. He or she is an ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to often create and market new goods or services. The term is a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to the type of personality who is willing to take upon herself or himself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome. Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist, is believed to have coined the word Entrepreneur first in about at 1800. He said an entrepreneur is “one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediately between capital and labour”.

Entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, resulting in many new ventures failing. The word entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who creates value by offering a product or service, by carving out a niche in the market that may not exist currently. Entrepreneurs tend to identify a market opportunity and exploit it by organizing their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions within a given sector.

Observers see them as being willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue opportunity.

Business entrepreneurs are viewed as fundamentally important in the capitalistic society. Some distinguish business entrepreneurs as either “political entrepreneurs” or “market entrepreneurs,” while social entrepreneurs‘ principal objectives include the creation of a social and/or environmental benefit.

I hope this definition gives you the drive to push through this year, as we are all in it together.

This years is for all strong ambitious leaders, we will make this year 2010 strong and prosperous.

References

1. Sullivan, arthur; Steven M. Sheffrin (2003). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458: Pearson Prentice Hall. pp. 6. ISBN 0-13-063085-3.

2. Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus, Tim Hindle, The Economist, page 77

3. See WILLIAM J. BAUMOL, ROBERT E. LITAN & CARL J. SCHRAMM, GOOD CAPITALISM, BAD CAPITALISM, AND THE ECONOMICS OF GROWTH AND PROSPERITY 3 (2007) (citing generally PETER F. DRUCKER, INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP (1985) (attributing coining and defining of “entrepreneur” to JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY, A TREATISE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY (1834)); but see Robert H. Brockhaus, Sr., The Psychology of the Entrepreneur, in ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP 40 (Calvin A. Kent, et al. eds. 1982) (citing J.S. MILL, PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY WITH SOME OF THEIR APPLICATIONS TO SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY (1848). Note th